I didn't know the Sistine Chapel had moved.

AP Has No Right to Obama ‘Hope’ Image

Excerpted from Bloomberg, more on the Shepard Fairey Debacle:

AP Has No Right to Obama ‘Hope’ Image, Photographer Tells Judge
By Erik Larson

The Associated Press, which sued artist Shepard Fairey for using an AP photograph as inspiration for a Barack Obama campaign poster, wrongfully copyrighted the image it seeks to protect, the photographer told a judge. Mannie Garcia, the freelance photographer who took the disputed photograph while on assignment for AP, said the news company’s copyright for the image should be invalidated. “The AP is aware, and was aware at the time of filing its copyright application for the Garcia photo that it was not the true owner of the rights to that photo,” the photographer’s lawyer, George Carpinello, said in the filing.

Garcia is challenging both the AP and Fairey by trying to join the pending lawsuit between them. The news company sued Fairey in March, accusing him and his Los Angeles-based company, Obey Giant Art Inc., of copyright infringement for using Garcia’s 2006 photograph of Obama at a National Press Club panel discussion about the humanitarian crisis in Sudan. Garcia also claims Fairey wrongfully copied the photograph.

The AP “remains confident in AP’s ownership of the copyright, because Mr. Garcia was an employee of AP when he took the photo in 2006,” said Paul Colford, an AP spokesman. Garcia, who works out of Kensington, Maryland, said in his court filing "that he can’t be considered an AP employee, because he was on assignment for five weeks and wasn’t eligable to join a union or receive health, vacation or unemployment benefits."

Whew...If we watched Obama, followed the lawsuit, obeyed Shepard Fairey and have an opinion, does that mean we can join the lawsuit too?

Here's the case info if you want to follow it on Lexus Nexus...
The case is Fairey v. The Associated Press, 09-cv-01123, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

Free Ride

Took the New York Free Water Taxi to IKEA last week. Splendid views, Swedish Meatballs and plebian photographs. I've amused myself, and hopefully you too, by fooling around with filters to see what I could salvage. Wasn't much there but these four caught my eye. I think they are too much sugar-substitute on the palate, but at least, the pixels were free.

Larry Rivers American-a

What better way to celebrate the fourth than with Larry Rivers? A quintessentially American painter who often painted historical themes. The current show at Tibor De Nagy has several sketches for the paintings, as a painter, it is always interesting to see how someone's process works.

Ahead of the "Hard" Times

For several summers now the Laurence Miller Gallery has been doing the 50/40. They offer
50 photographs for 40% off—an opportunity for new collectors, a way for a gallery to beat the summer doldrums and a thank you for the frequent collectors. Good idea, huh?

Reader feedback on Walker Evans and the Depression

One of my last posts was about Walker Evans and his book (with James Agee), Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: The American Classic, in Words and Photographs, of Three Tenant Families in the Deep South. One of the blog readers sent me a link to more of the story. I didn't realize there was lingering bitterness at the exposure of their poverty, and anger that they never received compensation.

There was even a subsequent book, a retracing with re-photography of the children now grown up titled, And Their Children After Them: The Legacy of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (a title drawn from the same passage of Ecclesiasticus) by journalist Dale Maharidge and photographer Michael Williamson. This book even won a Pulitzer in 1990. I don't know if the families received any compensation this time around.

However, this is an American saga. Three generations removed from the poverty of Mills Hill, the grandchildren are set to go to college. According to the Fortune article, The Most Famous Story We Never Told, they don't share their father's lingering resentment, they feel pride in the struggle of their fore-fathers/mothers.

I would agree with them. For many years I have had a framed photograph, ordered from the Library of Congress, of Allie Mae Burroughs (shown below). I keep Ms. Burroughs in my kitchen. When I drink my daily morning coffee, she reminds me to be strong and to endure.



















Note: Photographs are from the Library of Congress Farm Security Administration collection.

Pictures at an Exhibition

Another confidential from school, the New York Academy of Art. An Exhibition in the downstairs gallery hung like the Louvre. Hmmmmm.....

Art School Confidential

Yeah, It's really fun to go to art school...

Oh, that question...

As you know, I've been away and will be off again this weekend for another week. I've been traveling in places short on cell reception and internet access. I actually had to make a call last week while standing in a swamp in two feet of muddy water. I used one eye for dialing, the other for tracking a few alligators who were lazing nearby. I'll blog as much as I can meanwhile and then I'll be back for a good long stay. Nice to be chatting with you again—I suffered from severe blogmissitis!

Continuing with our media thread, Stacey Williams-Ng is painting a new series in which the paintings are a response to the significance of social media, and in particular, to status updates. As we know all too well, status updates are a mainstay of social applications like Twitter and Facebook, answering the question “What are you doing right now?” The result is collaborative and democratic—everyone is visible, and equal.

In her heavily textured oil paintings, figures are seen performing mundane tasks, such as cooking pancakes or reading while other more quixotic pieces contain no explicit narrative other that the status update that inspired it, such as the peculiar “Rafiq A. Spring…the end of my winter of discontent or just the next pithy chapter?”

A simple walk #... oh, who cares

We've had a great spell of warm weather and I've been using every free minute to walk in the sunshine snapping away and plying my movie camera. As I was on my stroll, I was greeted by a very elderly lady, also out enjoying the weather. She saw my camera and commented, "yes, there are some lovely things starting to bloom." I had to agree although the only thing really blooming here is myself.

Virtual Restoration

A lot of effort is being expended these days on the virtual restoration of artwork. Leading to new information about how the painter painted,what changes he/she might have made during the process and how the colors really looked, using contemporary pigments of the era. Interesting huh?

DIGITIZATION OF MONA LISA 240MEG.PIXELS
by LUMIERE-TECHNOLOGY